Phantom Hero The Innocents
by Rydia Erdrick Landale
Summary: Mayhem and mischief at the St. Canard Mall during Christmastime, with Darkwing, Launchpad, Gosalyn...and a couple supervillians...results in a rather bizzare twist.
1. A (Crazed) Christmas Carol

Phantom Hero   
  


Phantom Hero (The Innocents)   
  
**A Darkwing Duck fanfic by Captain Chaotica!!, (c) 2002.**   
  


It was midnight in the city--a sultry, exotic, steamy midnight in late June. The summer heat of the day radiated off the baking streets in waves, and the air was alive with the sounds of the people of the night, going about their business--legal or otherwise. Danger, corruption and mystery were everywhere--in other words, it was a typical night in St. Canard.  
Typical, that is, if your name was Darkwing Duck.  
Skulking between the sizzling neon lights, Darkwing Duck crept from shadow to shadow as part of them, a piece of the darkness come alive, stalking his prey. Yet another criminal lowlife thought he could do what he liked in St. Canard without punishment.  
Yet another criminal lowlife was about to be proven wrong.  
The daring do-gooder definitively defied the devious denizens of darkness! No villian was too dangerous, no clue was too small, no--  
  
"No ADJECTIVE is too ARROGANT, you mean, Dad. Geez, you're boring. NOBODY'S gonna want to read THIS."  
"Oh, and I suppose they'd want to read your stories about giant mutant zombie slugs from Jupiter, hmmm? Yeah, like that's realistic, Gos."  
"They were from Mars, not Jupiter, Dad, and at least I know how to keep an audience! Come on, tell an interesting story...Like, what about when we travelled back in time to when you were in school?" Gosalyn stopped and scratched her head, suddenly confused. "Funny....for some reason....I can't quite remember how that one ended...it must've turned out all right, 'cos we're here, but..."  
Drake Mallard suppressed a shudder at the memory. He remembered what had happened...all too well. He wished he didn't.  
"Some stories, Gosalyn...perhaps shouldn't be told." He sighed sadly and patted his adopted daughter on the shoulder. "Now, go upstairs and go to bed, it's way past your bedtime."  
Gosalyn gave him a strange look, wondering what it was about his eyes that was bothering her...and then, shrugging, trotted upstairs two at a time and forgot all about it.  
"Uh...you all right, DW?" asked Launchpad McQuack, who had been silent all this time, as he was busy watching the late-night news.  
"Yeah...I'm all right...just...feeling kinda...thoughtful, is all. About...life, in general. I just...want some quiet time to be alone for a bit, LP."  
Launchpad didn't often see his boss/best friend in this kind of mood, so he was a little unnerved. "Right-o, Boss", he said, faking his usual cheerfulness, and, grabbing his favourite popular mechanics magazine for some light reading, quietly stole out of the room.  
Darkwing sat staring off into space at nothing much for a good five minutes. Then, slowly, he picked up a photograph of Gosalyn from a stand near the bookshelf and cradled it delicately in his hands.  
"Yes, Gosalyn..." he whispered. "I remember what happened that time..."  
  


* * * 

  
  
SEVEN MONTHS EARLIER...  
  
"Okay, Dad," said Gosalyn, in her best take-charge voice, "I've got my Christmas list allll set up. Just let me get it before we hit the mall..." She dashed upstairs.  
Long before Gosalyn herself came back down, a long roll of paper started unravelling itself from the top of the stairs, bumping down each and every one, getting longer and longer with each step, until it rolled finally to a halt at Drake Mallard's feet--who was standing all the way across the living room, at the front door. He glared down at the paper, shaking his head.  
"Whoops, uh...it kinda got away from me," said Gosalyn sheepishly, gathering up armfuls of paper as she akwardly made her way down the stairs. She was now dressed for the winter weather, in coat, scarf, mittens and boots. "Anyway, I'm asking for MUCH less this year than I did last year, as you can see, Dad, and since I was so good this year I'm sure to get all of it..."  
"Good? HOW often have you cleaned your room, young lady?" said Drake, folding his arms.  
"Uh....well, they say it's the THOUGHT that counts, and I must've THOUGHT about cleaning my room at least a jillion times this year alone. Well, half a jillion times, anyway. Now, come on, let's hit the mall, I wanna get there before they stop handing out the free candy canes!" She bounded through the doorway.  
Shaking his head, Drake followed her. "Coming, Launchpad?" he called over his shoulder.  
"Yep," said the huge pilot. He knew the main reason they were bringing him along was to carry the gifts, but he still loved Christmas anyway. "Ah, Christmas. My favourite time of the year." He smiled as he followed Drake out the door.  
  
"Ah, Christmas. My LEAST favourite time of the year." snarled a raspy, cracked voice, but since the speaker was all alone in the Audobon Bay lighthouse, nobody else could hear him. Well, nobody else that NORMAL people would consider as being able to hear, anyway. There was, however, a large audience of very attentive light bulbs and various electrical devices, lined up in neat rows on the floor and the simple furniture.  
"Every year, people enslave TONS of innocent light bulbs and force them to work for hours on end, sometimes days, even, and for WHAT?" Megavolt ranted, stomping back and forth across the bare wooden floorboards. "They don't even really NEED them--it's not for light to see by, it's for...for...mere DECORATION!" The skinny rat supervillian clenched his gloved fists angrily. "Some people almost entirely COVER their houses and roofs, just to out-do the neighbors..it's criminal, I tells ya! CRIMINAL!"  
A sudden thought struck him, sparked from whatever random combination of synapses counted for his "mind" these days. "Well, I'm not going to let them get away with this barbarism any longer! I shall SAVE the light bulbs from their Christmas enslavement!" A small line of current travelled from one prong of his plug-shaped hat to the other for a moment, as he paced the floor faster in his excitement. "Wait for me, my dear little sixty-watt friends--soon I shall be bringing many of your bretheren home for you to play with! You can all romp and frolic and have a merry Christmas just like you deserve! I'll even bake homemade gingerbread cookies for everyone; won't that be yummy? DON'T worry, I won't make them too spicy again this time..." this last was addressed to a blender, as if it had spoken up.  
Megavolt snapped his fingers, causing sparks to fly from them briefly. "Yes...and I know just where to start. Where is the biggest display of so-called 'merry' Christmas decorating to be found in this rotten city? The St. Canard shopping mall!"  
Putting a heavy, fur-trimmed red coat over his usual outfit and slinging a huge sack over his shoulder, so that he looked for all the world like some demented parody of Santa Claus, Megavolt headed out into the freezing cold winter afternoon.   
  
"Whoah, cool, look at THAT!" yelled Gosalyn, dragging her unwilling father along by the hand so hard that she almost ripped his arm out of its socket. She charged towards the mall's gigantic Christmas tree. Every year, they put up a HUGE tree that stretched up for both of the mall's stories and then into the sky-dome at the very top, so that it was about 50 feet tall, and decorated out to the nines, but it seemed they had overdone themselves this year. Drake looked sideways at the tree; it was entirely too gaudy for his taste. The tree itself was covered with ropes of tinsel as thick around as Drake's waist; glass ornaments bigger than his head, etc. Underneath its boughs were gigantic versions of traditional children's toys--ballerina dolls, toy soldiers, jack-in-the-boxes, spinning tops, teddy bears, etc. It was supposed to be charming and cute, but Drake had always found it more than a bit creepy.  
"Nice tree," he said vaguely. "I like the silver tinsel. Really UGLY toys, though." He indicated a jack-in-the-box out of which was lolling a life-sized toy duck in a gaudy jester's outfit, its head hanging down and the face hidden by the long tails of the belled hat it was wearing. "Come on, Gosalyn, if you really expect me to get to even a FRACTION of the things on this list, we can't hang around all day admiring the decor..."  
"Oh, lighten up, Dad," sniffed Gosalyn. "It's CHRISTMAS! Ya gotta get into the experience! And the decorations are part of it. KEEN GEAR, there's a sale on the latest Whiffle Boy video game cartridge!" and she yanked him across the hallway to the Electronics Boutique near the mall's entrance.  
Launchpad followed along stoically. Personally, he liked these decorations...the gigantic strings of tinsel that decorated the ceiling...the tons of multicoloured blinking lights everywhere...Christmas was always so pretty. Tiring, but pretty.  
"That imbecillic Launchpad and that annoying little brat who always hangs out with Darkwing for some reason...I thought they'd NEVER leave", muttered the jack-in-the-box to itself, suddenly becoming a Jack OUT of the box--and seeming totally oblivious to the screams and pointing that resulted among the watching crowd from this. "That was getting really uncomfortable. Ugly, am I?! And how many beauty contests have THEY won lately, hmm? No matter. With my time-top hidden here as an innocent toy among the Christmas decorations," Quackerjack burst out into an insane, high-pitched laugh and leaned against the colourful, gigantic top that was underneath the tree, "I'll...I'll....um."  
He capered wildly around the room for a minute, bumping into many people, and then sat down underneath the tree again, inside his box--it felt kind of like..home, in a strange way, and folded his legs Indian-fashion. He put his chin into his white-gloved hands and pouted pensively. "Well...I'm sure I'll think of SOMEthing dastardly and, above all, FUN! to do! Isn't that right, Mr. Banana Brain?" he asked a banana-shaped puppet that he produced from inside one of his voluminous, poofy mismatching sleeves.  
"'Course you will, Bill," "said" Mr. Banana Brain, in a higher-pitched version of Quackerjack's own voice.  
Quackerjack sighed happily. It was so nice to have a friend like Mr. Banana Brain to talk to.  
  
Drake Mallard whipped his head around quickly as a loud SHRIEK echoed from the hallway outside. Gosalyn, busy trying to explain to him why she really, truly NEEDED a pair of black rollerblades with neon-green skulls painted on the sides, at first didn't notice. "Dad, you're not listen--"  
"GET DOWN FROM THERE!!" came a roar from the hallway outside the sports shop. Gosalyn broke off in mid-sentence and looked out the door of the shop. "Gee, wonder what that crowd is looking at?" she mused aloud.  
"I don't know," said Drake grimly, shoving his way out the door and into the even more tightly-packed than normal, for the Christmas season, mall proper. "Come on, Launchpad, I have a bad feeling about this..."  
"What is that man DOING?!" yelled a distraught fat pig woman with red hair. Her equally overweight, freckled, redheaded daughter burst into tears for no apparent reason, hitting notes that until now, Drake had thought were possible only for dog-whistles. He attempted to put his hands over his ear-holes, but quickly found that he could not fight his way through the crowd and do that at the same time, so he gritted his teeth and shoved onwards.  
Cries of "What's going on?" and "Is he CRAZY?" and "COME DOWN THIS INSTANT, MISTER!" sounded all around the trio as they struggled towards...whatever it was the crowd was looking at. The last statements were said by mall security, who were all looking up at the ceiling. Finally, Drake realised that EVERYBODY was looking up, so he turned his gaze that way, too.  
Calmly straddling a fluffy strand of mulberry-purple tinsel as if it was the strongest, sturdiest beam in the world, was a slender rodent man in a tight yellow rubber jumpsuit, accessorised with various electrical accoutrements. He was carefully and methodically unscrewing each and every single last light from the Christmas display on that part of the mall's ceiling and putting them into a large bag slung over his shoulder. Even without the telltale outfit, Drake would have instantly known who that was. Only ONE person could--or WOULD--unscrew light bulbs from a hot, high voltage display while it was still ON and not get hurt...  
"Megavolt!" he yelled out loud. "That power-hungry plug-headed pilferer is at it AGAIN! Geez, can't we ever have a quiet Christmas around here in St. Canard without some supervillian or another RUINING it?!" On the one hand, he was annoyed, as he really had wanted a quiet family outing with Gosalyn and Launchpad. But underneath, he was secretly glad to see Megavolt, his oldest enemy, here. Too many days without any crime to fight made him soft--and, more importantly, bored. Darkwing Duck was going to ride again! Finally, something interesting to do!  
His shout must have carried up to the rafters, because Megavolt paused in his lightbulb liberation for a moment. "What?" he muttered to himself, putting another blue bulb into the sack. "For a second there, I thought I heard...it sounded kinda familiar..." He scanned the crowd, but saw no caped and masked figure. "Whatever." He went back to his task, completely ignoring the screaming and the pointing.  
Drake posed dramatically, hand over his chest. "THIS is a job for--"  
"DAD!" hissed Gosalyn between clenched teeth, lunging up to place her hand over Drake's beak. "Not in front of all these people! Or have you forgotten...?"  
"Oh, uh. Yeah." said Drake sheepishly. "But, well, I can't let Megavolt get AWAY with this...."  
"Well, I dunno, DW..." shrugged Launchpad. "Looks to me like he's not really hurting anybody, or nothin'. I mean, it's just cheap lightbulbs, you can get a hundred of 'em on a string for five bucks or so...no big deal. If we bother him, we might just make him mad, and then he'd start zappin' around. Maybe we should just leave him alone...?"  
Drake turned imperiously to his sidekick, beak held high in the air. "THAT kind of thinking, dear Launchpad, is why YOU will never be a true superhero! No crime is too small, no wrong too insignificant, no--"  
"What's THAT?!" shrieked the horrible little redheaded pig girl, pointing off in the opposite direction, towards the giant tree at the mall's entrance. Bright, strange multicoloured lights and loud, off-key music were coming from that direction. Curious, the crowd stomped off as one entity to gawk at this new diversion. One thing you could say about St. Canardian crowds--they had refined gawking into a high art.  
This left Drake, Gosalyn and Launchpad alone with Megavolt. "Aha!" said Drake, ducking behind a smaller Christmas tree. A moment later, a puff of blue smoke appeared directly in front of Megavolt's face, on the same rope of tinsel he was straddling. From the smoke, a mysterious voice spoke the following:  
"I am the terror that flaps in the night! I am that burned-out bulb at the very top that forces you to re-do the entire house! I am...DARKWING....DUCK!!" And out stepped Darkwing, dressed in his usual double-breasted blazer, turtleneck, cape, mask and fedora, all in fashionably matching shades of purple and pink.  
"Ya-ha!" Megavolt leaped backwards suddenly, which, considering his precarious position 30 feet above the floor, was perhaps not the best thing to do, but he narrowly avoided falling. "Darkwing Duck, ooooh, I'm sooooo impressed. How'd you get up here without a ladder, anyway?" He held out his right hand, and pulled back his right thumb with the fingers on his left hand, as if "cocking" a gun. "But it doesn't matter, because you won't be up here for long! A HEE hee hee hee hee!" and he giggled insanely while zapping over and over again at Darkwing in rapid-fire. The ricochets of his electrical bolts bounced all over the mall, setting various items aflame and adding to the general chaos. The security guards left off yelling at Megavolt and ran for the fire extinguishers instead.  
Darkwing himself, however, was completely unaffected--he danced agilely out of the way of each blast, and also managed to somehow keep his balance on the strand of tinsel. "Your seasonal stealing spree stops here, battery-acid for brains," he growled menacingly, advancing slowly towards Megavolt, balancing as on a high-wire.  
"Well," Megavolt paused for a moment and put his hand to his chin thoughtfully, which surprised Darkwing so much that he stop in mid-step, with one foot frozen in the air, "technically, we ALL have battery acid for brains, or something similar. I mean, it's fluid that makes up the gap between synapses, and what actually makes the thoughts flow from one synapse to another is very small-voltage electrical impulses--"  
"ENOUGH with the science lesson!" yelled Darkwing, windmilling his arms in disbelief. "The point IS, I'm gonna toss you out like last year's fruitcake and.....er....what's that...um...ripping sound...?"  
"I know that sound! That's a bad sound!" shrieked Megavolt, putting his hands to his rubber-hatted head. "You idiot--the tinsel is ripping! It's not meant to hold all this weight! And I thought I was the nutty one!" He tied the ends of his sack of light bulbs around his neck, grabbed the tinsel, and turned to face the floor. "This is gonna hurt..."  
Darkwing looked around desperately for something, anything, to break his fall, but it was too late. He bent down and grasped hold of the tinsel at the last second, as it gave way right in the middle, between the superhero and supervillian...  
and, swinging like a pair of indoor Tarzans, Darkwing and Megavolt whistled through the air to SLAM violently into opposite sides of the corridor. They slid down their respective walls, slowly, flattened.  
Gosalyn peeked out through her fingers. "Ouch." she muttered.  
Launchpad shuddered, and shook his head. "THAT'S gonna leave a mark..." He turned to the two limp bodies on the floor. "You okay?"  
"I've had better days, but I think I'll be all right, thanks for asking." said Megavolt politely. Darkwing just groaned.  
The electrical rodent was the first to recover. Staggering to his feet with the sack still around his neck--the fact that it was over his back and he had hit the wall FACE-first had saved the light bulbs inside from being broken--Megavolt wobbled unsteadily towards the nearest exit. "I think..that's enough...rescuing for one day..." he panted. "Don't worry, my little low-watt friends...I will save...the rest of you...tomorrow..."  
"No you won't!" Megavolt's progress forward was suddenly halted by a hand gripping his blue rubber boot by the ankle. "I...don't think so...Sparky..." panted Darkwing, who had gotten the worst of the fall--the last ten feet of his plunge had taken him straight through one of the mall's many smaller Christmas trees. He was still coughing up pine needles. "I...Darkwing Duck...shall stop you..."  
Megavolt rolled his eyes. "Oh, give it UP already. Please. You're just embarrassing yourself at this point, you know." He continued to walk forwards, although much more slowly, dragging Darkwing behind him.  
Gosalyn elbowed Launchpad in the ribs to get his attention. "Launchpad, I'm going to create a diversion. As soon as Megavolt's looking at me, I want you to run over there to the food court, grab the first cup of soda you see, and throw it on him! That'll short-circuit his plans!"  
Launchpad nodded, then frowned as something occurred to him. "But, Gosalyn...won't that be stealing?"  
Gos rolled her eyes. "LAUNCHpad, it's for a good cause! Now be alert!"  
But just then--of all things--a small army of toy soldiers came marching out, in strict formation. "Oh. How cute." said Darkwing from his position on the floor. "How Christmasy. Somebody shoot me now."  
Tbe soldiers seemed happy to oblige--they raised their toy guns to their shoulders and fired, all in perfect unison. Several hot, solid, and definitely _real_ tiny balls of lead sprayed into Gosalyn, who was closest to them. "Ow! Ee! Ack! QUIT it!" She raised her foot to stomp on a few of the soldiers, but was cut off by another all-too-familiar voice.  
"It's PLAAAYYYYYYTIME!!" Behind the toy soldiers, as if they were some strange parody of an honour guard--and to his way of thinking, they probably WERE--a tall duck in a colourful, clashing jester's outfit turned handsprings and cartwheels towards them, giggling insanely all the while. Gosalyn groaned. She should have expected this.  
"Quackerjack, too?!" said Darkwing muzzily, finally getting to his feet. "Great, just what I needed..."  
"SPARKY, my friend, fancy meeting YOU here!" beamed Quackerjack, skipping over to the yellow-clad rat and rubbing his hands vigorously. "You're just in time! I had the best idea to make Christmas WAY more fun...hoo hoo, ha ha! Actually it was Mr. Banana Brain's idea but I came up with the details. Come on!" He grabbed Megavolt's hand and skipped back to the giant Christmas tree at the mall's entrance.  
"Why do I always have to go along with YOUR diabolical schemes, I wanna do MY diabolical scheme for a change..." whined Megavolt as he was dragged along, but he didn't put up much resistance, as Quackerjack was dragging him in the direction he originally wanted to go anyway. "And would everybody please STOP calling me SPARKY!!"  
"Come on, guys," said Darkwing, brushing the last bits of holly out of his feathers. "Let's put a crimp in their criminal Christmas caper!" The three charged after the supervillians.  
  
The lights and noises were getting more and more chaotic the closer they got to the gigantic tree, and Darkwing finally saw why. One of the huge spinning tops under the tree was spinning and making a loud, off-key humming noise...spinning faster and faster, as if gathering power for something. The lights on the gigantic tree were all flickering...as were all the lights in the entire mall, after a moment. Obviously the device was sucking up all available power...and it still wasn't quite enough.  
"Quackerjack's time-top", he cursed himself for not recognising it earlier. "I don't know what piece of paradoxical plundering that pair of paranoid pirates are up to, but I intend to stop them before they even start!" He plunged through the crowd--which was frozen out of a combination of fear and fascination--towards the top, which was spinning disturbingly fast by now. It made him dizzy if he looked at it for too long, so he stopped looking at it.  
"Come on, Launchpad!" said Gosalyn, dragging the large duck behind her by his aviator's scarf. Launchpad was carrying a jumbo-sized Coo-Coo Cola with ice, since he thought he was still supposed to carry out the plan Gosalyn had outlined earlier. Being thirsty, he took occasional sips from the straw as he stumbled forward.  
"With this time machine, we can bring back toys that will become next year's biggest Christmas craze...BEFORE they become famous...and make ourselves a fortune by getting in ahead of the trend!" giggled Quackerjack gleefully, standing on his hands in front of the top. "Come on, Megsy, give it your magic touch. It only needs a little more power to take off..."  
Megavolt grumbled, but walked up the ladder that led into the entrance hatch at the roof of the time-top, put his hands near, but not touching, the plunger that activated the device's motor, and concentrated. Waves of energy surged out of his body as visible sparks and flowed into the machine, causing it to spin even faster. The high-pitched humming sound changed pitch abruptly and became an ear-splitting whine.  
"Maybe I should take this thing into the shop, it's never done THAT before..." mused Quackerjack.  
"You're not taking ANYthing ANYwhere...except your own sorry carcass, to JAIL!" snarled Darkwing, bursting through the crowd and whipping out his trusty gas-gun. "One false move, clown, and it's Bedtime for Bozo."  
"Oooh." said Quackerjack, sarcastically. "Believe me, I AM worried. But, YOU should be more worried about Megavolt..." he trilled this last line in a high sing-song voice and pointed up towards the top of the ladder. Megavolt seemed to have decided that he had enough charge left in the gigantic battery strapped to his back to fry a few people and still finish energizing the time-top--he had turned away from the machine and was aiming his fingers at the crowd.  
"I'll take care of YOU later," said Darkwing, and lunged up the ladder.  
"DAD!" yelled Gosalyn, following him. "Wait up!"  
"Uh...Gosalyn...?" questioned Launchpad. He followed more akwardly, since he was determined to hold onto his soft drink and climb at the same time, but he made it up the ladder.  
"What?!" roared Megavolt, waving his hands frantically to ward the three of them off. "No...I'm too busy for this right now--it's about to--"  
And just then, several things happened at once.  
Darkwing crashed bodily into Megavolt, sending the sparking rat plunging headfirst and backwards through the open hatchway of the time-top.  
Unable to stop themselves, Gosalyn and Launchpad followed shortly afterwards, Launchpad landing heavily on top of everyone else.  
The flimsy lid popped off of his drink and ice-cold, sticky brown liquid spilled all over the inside of the cramped cockpit. It splashed on Megavolt, causing him to yelp with pain as his remaining power was expended in a shower of violent green sparks. Weak and singed, the skinny rat collapsed in a heap.  
The soda splashed on the delicate, sophisticated controls and machinery on the time-top, too. The gaudily-painted device went into its take-off sequence, automatically.  
Quackerjack finally caught up with what was happening. "NOOOO!!!" he shrieked, dancing around the top with rage and pulling at the ends of his jester's cap, causing the bells to ring in a muffled, sort of strangled way. "NO!! STOP! Get out of there! I haven't set the time or space coordinates yet..."  
And, with a great, ear-splitting POP and a silence that was somehow louder than the noise before it, the time-top...disappeared.  
"I hate when this happens." said Quackerjack, in a petulant tone. "Come on, Mr. Banana Brain. I feel like being alone. This isn't FUN anymore." He climbed back inside "his" box and slammed the lid.  
"Phew...this Christmas is turning out to be even more chaotic than last year's--and I oughta know." panted a tall, slender, green duck at the front of the crowd, wiping his forehead with a mittened hand. His hat slid backwards slightly, revealing pinkish-purple petals where hair should have been, and a stamen or two. "Just once, I'd like to have a nice QUIET Christmas."  
The tree nodded the top of its trunk in sympathy and patted him on the shoulder with a branch.  
  



	2. Forward to the Past!

Phantom Hero, Part 2   
  


Phantom Hero (The Innocents)   
  
Part 2   
  


"Oooooh." moaned Darkwing, raising one hand gingerly to rub his head. Even that tiny movement seemed to send knives of pain stabbing through his entire body. He felt as if he had been stomped on repeatedly, run over by a truck, and dropped off a cliff--all at the same time. "What hit me...?"  
All around him was nothing but darkness, but he had a sensation of closed quarters. "Ow!" came a voice from his left, when he tried to move his arm.  
"Gosalyn?" he asked. "Where are we?"  
"Ugh...DW...is that you?" called Launchpad's voice, from somewhere underneath Darkwing's body, it seemed. "I...don't feel so good..."  
"Where are we?" said Gosalyn's voice. She struggled to free herself from the tangle of bodies.  
"WHEN are we is a better question," whined a scratchy voice. "And by the way, I COULD give us all some light to see by...if SOMEbody hadn't shorted me OUT..."  
Finally, with a clanking sound, the hatch in the ceiling of the time-top--time-top, yeah, that was it, that's where they were, Darkwing now remembered--came open, as Megavolt leaned against it with all his strength. The light that rushed in was horribly painful, but the fresh air was welcome enough to almost make up for it. Eventually they managed to get themselves untangled, and, everybody finally standing on their OWN feet again rather than each others', they climbed out of the time-top in single file.  
"Ugh...why do I feel like I did the morning after last year's New Year's Eve party...?" Darkwing muttered aloud, not really expecting an answer.  
"Quacky...erp" Megavolt leaned against a wall for a moment and fought down a sudden urge to be sick, "Quacky always said that...time-travel without the proper calculations ahead of time...might have...adverse side-effects on people..."  
"So...where ARE we then?" wondered Launchpad, taking his aviator's cap off and rubbing his head as if he could force the headache away by doing so. "I mean, uh, WHEN are we? And where too, of course."  
Gosalyn, as is usually the case with youth, shook off the sickening effects of time-travel first. She wandered off, although a bit unsteadily, to explore the room they were in. "Hmmm..." She looked at the books and desks that were scattered all over the room--most of the desks in the middle of the room, around the radius of the time-top's space, had been smashed into kindling, but they were still recognisable as desks. It was clear that they had once been arranged into neat rows, but the sudden arrival of the time-top in the center of the room had violently put everything into a new arrangment. There was also a round electrical clock and several charts and diagrams on the walls. "Looks like a classroom to me--or what's LEFT of one."  
Darkwing looked around at the room. "Why, you're right! This is St. Canard High School...I remember this class...Algebra 101, taught by Mrs. Ordinate...boy, was SHE ever a witch...er, no offense to Morgana." He stepped forward and absently touched a chart showing various forumlas on the wall. "This is...all very familiar..."  
"I hate to interrupt this touching trip down Memory Lane," said Megavolt, "but shouldn't we be fixing the time-top, or something...?"  
"Well, YOU'RE the mad inventor, YOU fix it!" countered Darkwing. He was reading the teacher's "answer book" on the desk--something he'd never dared to do when he was an actual student. The date of the most recent entry was Thursday, June 10, 1973. Why did that date bother him for some reason?  
"Hey, I didn't build this thing, Quackerjack did!" protested Megavolt, but he disappeared inside the time-top for a few moments anyway. When he popped back out again, his face had an expression of intense relief. "PHEW. It's okay! It's all right! Nothing's broken!"  
"That's great!" cried Launchpad, tying his hat back on. "That means we can go straight home again!"  
"No, not the time-top, that's wrecked beyond all repair unless I can get several replacement parts from somewhere." Megavolt waved this aside as if it was of no consequence. "I mean, the light bulbs I rescued from the mall are still all right!"  
"Oooh. Wouldn't want the poor widdle light bulbs to be hurt, that'd be teeeeerrrrible," Darkwing rolled his eyes sarcastically and drawled out the las word.  
"Yeah, it would," said Megavolt, nodding earnestly.  
Darkwing paused, went through several things in his mind that he COULD say next, and then, with a sigh, decided to let it drop. "Just don't STEAL the replacement parts or anything, Megsy," he said, still looking over the classroom. "Remember: we're in the past. If we cause too much commotion here, we may really mess up the timeline. And...well, I know we normally don't get along, but I think for now...we should call a truce? It's more important that we just get home. We can go back to beating each other silly, as usual, AFTERwards."  
"Well....fun as it would be to zap your brains straight out of your ears...I don't want to be stuck here any more than you do, so I guess you got yourself a truce, Dipwing Dork. On one condition: If you EVER tell ANY of the other supervillians about this, I WILL barbecue you like a set of ribs." He climbed down to the floor. "Hey, how come nobody's here, if this is a school day?"  
This was an astonishingly astute observation for someone as out of it as Megavolt, and Darkwing looked up in surprise. "Um...well, er..."  
Gosalyn folded her arms across her chest and rolled her eyes. "Guys, look at the CLOCK, duh..."  
It was 12:29 PM.  
"Oh. Lunchtime. All the students are out of class, of course," said Darkwing, trying to sound as if he knew that all along, to mask the fact that it had never even occurred to him to look at the clock.  
"Uh...DW, I don't think we have MUCH time before lunchtime ends..." warned Launchpad, running a finger along the inside of his flight jacket's collar, nervously. "Shouldn't we be trying to hide the time-machine?"  
"Hide a 10-foot-tall thing painted like a circus tent?!" demanded Darkwing. It had not been a good day, and it promised to get even worse--but Launchpad still didn't actually deserve the nasty tone Darkwing was using. "Good idea, Launchpad! Any idea HOW?!"  
Launchpad cast his eyes upwards and rubbed his chin a moment, as he always did when he was attempting deep thought, but whatever he might have said next was cut off by a new voice.  
A rather familiar voice. "Aha! Random, total destruction of an innocent classroom! It could only be one thing--a CRIME has been committed here!"  
Darkwing turned around to look into the eyes of what was definitely--minus about twenty years or so--his own face.  
  
Drake Mallard, age 17, stared curiously at Darkwing Duck. There was something....ABOUT him, that he couldn't put his finger on..."Wearing a MASK, eh?" growled Drake, grabbing his older self by the collar and shaking him. "I don't TRUST people who wear masks...YOU must be the criminal who is trying to destroy our lovely school, one room at a time! And this! THIS strange device is obviously some unathorised machinery, probably STOLEN from the GOVERNMEN--"  
"Out of my way, Drake the Dweeb, I wanna see this thing!" grumbled another voice that was also--unfortunately--all too familiar. "Anything that trashes the boring stupid Algebra class is fine by me." Hamm String, the enourmous captain of the football team, shoved his way through the crowd, literally stomping over Drake to get at the time-top. "How ugly. I suppose YOU built it?" He sneered and fingered Darkwing's purple cape derisively. "Little early for Halloween, ain't it?" He guffawed.  
"We..this is...I'll have you know--" Darkwing stammered.  
"We're visiting scientists from Duckburg University," said Megavolt, shoving his way forwards and taking charge before the bewildered Darkwing could do more than blink.  
_I guess Socket-Face here IS the right one to play this part,_ thought Darkwing to himself. _After all, scientists are KNOWN for being weird and twitchy, and he definitely fits the bill..._  
"This is a...instant-teleportation device. We meant to park it outside the school, but there was, ahem, just a SMALL problem with the coordinates programming, nothing that can't be fixed I'm sure...We're going to be making an important presentation in front of the entire school tomorrow, but it's not ready yet. CAREFUL with that!!" he shrieked, his voice hitting a note two octaves higher than before, as he whapped Hamm String's pawing hands away from the top. "It's very delicate equipment! You wouldn't want it to explode, would ya?"  
"Er...let's just leave, Hamm," said a whiny voice, and Hamm's girlfriend Prina Lott came up from behind the teenage pig, pulling on his sleeve. "I still haven't reserved the limo yet, and the prom is tomorrow night..."  
Reluctantly, Hamm started to turn away. Then he turned back, pointing at Darkwing. "Okay, so you're scientists, but what's up with that costume?" he demanded.  
Gosalyn, Launchpad, and Megavolt all exchanged glances.  
"It's his way." said Gosalyn.  
The younger Drake Mallard finally was able to stand back up again, with Hamm's weight off his back, but promptly walked into a wall, as he was still a bit dizzy. It just wasn't his day.  
Ignoring all this, hidden away at the back of the classroom, was a skinny teenaged rat boy dressed in clashing, badly-fitting clothes, with long, fluffy brown hair down to his shoulders. He didn't care about any of this stuff--although that big device was a bit interesting--he had his own pet project to work on. A demolished classroom was something happening to OTHER people; he was in his own little world. Whistling happily between his buck teeth, the boy went on hooking the electrical wires to his modified treadmill. He'd wait until after school was out for the day, put this thing in the science lab, where he likely wouldn't be disturbed, and then...watch out world, here comes a new scientific breakthrough! Carpet static WAS the wave of the future...and he'd prove it! Elmo Sputterspark absentmindedly rubbed the bruises from where he had been slammed into a locker earlier today--it had been the tenth time this week--and went back to work.  
  
The quartet had managed to leave the school without too much incident--although Darkwing honestly worried, for several tense moments there, that Gosalyn would get them all LYNCHED for the way she kept constantly falling over and pounding the floor with laughter at everybody's hairstyles and fashions--and they were now walking through the park. Even Megavolt had been relatively well-behaved--only two light-bulbs from the school were hidden on his person. He had taken off the battery, socket, goggles, plug-hat and extension cord and left them inside the time-top, since he was out of power anyway, and he didn't stand out quite as badly now. He had even bought a long, loose, garish paisley t-shirt at a second-hand store (not because it was second hand and that's all he could find; he actually LIKED the shirt) and put it over his tight jumpsuit to make it (sort of) look as if he was wearing an ordinary shirt and pants ensemble--if you squinted and felt in a charitable mood, he could almost pass for normal.  
At first, Darkwing was reluctant to leave the time-top inside the school, but Gosalyn pointed out that if the students thought it would explode if they touched it, they'd hardly be in a hurry to do anything to the time-machine. And Prina Lott had spread the rumour FAST, as only Prina Lott could. "Wow, something she's actually GOOD for", muttered Darkwing under his breath.  
It was a hot, sunny summer day, the bees were buzzing in the flowers, and an opressive humidity settled over the town, making everything feel somehow slowed down and lazy...but Megavolt was still antsy. He danced back and forth from one foot to the other, full of nervous energy because....well, just because he was Megavolt, basically. "Guys...this is wrong...hanging out with good guys for such a long time at a stretch is really cramping my style...I gotta take a break! I know...I'll get the parts for the time-top. It might take a while. Don't wait up!" and he dashed off.  
"Think he'll be back?" said Launchpad, looking after him.  
"One can only HOPE," said Darkwing. "After all, he's stuck in the past too, if the time-top goes unrepaired."  
"Of course, that's SANE people's thinking," said Gosalyn darkly.  
"Come on, guys. Let's look for a hotel room or something. I've been on my feet for either 20 years, or at least several hours, and at any rate, I'm worn out." said Darkwing.  
  
5:30 pm. Almost five hours, and Megavolt still hadn't returned--with the parts or without. Becoming more and more frustrated by the minute, Darkwing paced back and forth across their hotel room. Gosalyn looked up from the Star Duck (original series) re-run she was half-heartedly watching on an obscure UHF channel and put down her bowl of potato chips.  
"Geez, they don't even have VCR's, talk about primitive", she glowered, standing up to fiddle with the rabbit-ears. "Dad, you're gonna wear a hole in the carpet. He'll get here, when he gets here."  
"What if he can't find the hotel? What if he can't find our room? We signed in under fake names, remember! What if--"  
"Uh, it occurs to me, DW," said Launchpad slowly, running his fingers through his bright red hair, "that if Megavolt got the parts...he wouldn't have to come to this hotel at all. He could just go right back to the school and start fixing the time-top right away."  
They all looked at each other.  
"TO THE SCHOOL!!" shouted Darkwing, leaping for the door. "Hurry!"  
  
The halls of St. Canard High School were all done up in streamers and paper flowers for the prom the next evening, but with absolutely nobody around and no noise anywhere, the effect they conveyed was more spooky than festive. The paper streamers rustled slightly in the breeze of their passing, almost like ghosts. Funny, how a place that could be so ordinary during the school day, when it was full of people and you were SUPPOSED to be there, could become so, well...forbidden feeling, when you had to pick a lock to get in, Darkwing mused.  
"I think the Algebra classroom is over here," he said quietly, thinking out loud. "Or was it over here? It's been a long time...I guess my memory isn't what it used to be..."  
Gosalyn, bored, wanderered down a side-corridor as her father's attention left her momentarily. She'd probably never have the chance to explore this place again, and a plain old school it may have been, but it was a school from the PAST. That automatically made it at least sort of interesting. It was awfully quiet though...she wished something was actually happening...  
Wait. There were...noises, coming from behind a door up ahead. At first she thought it was just machinery--the boiler room or something--but then, putting her ear to the door, she thought she could make out the sound of somebody breathing.  
"I'll bet it's a BURGLAR!" she whispered out loud, her imagination on fire. "I'll rush in, and FOIL the bad guy, and my name will be in all the papers! 'Heroic Mystery Girl Saves St. Canard High!' And...and since this is the past..." she paused for thought, "that means that I'll...I'll go down in the HISTORY books! I'll be able to find photos of me in them when I get home, I bet! Keeeeen gear! No need to tell Dad, I can handle this myself."  
She tried the doorknob, gingerly. It was unlocked. Gosalyn flattened herself against the wall next to the door, grabbing the knob but not turning it in one hand--this required her to stand on tip-toes, as everything was built for an adult height--took a deep breath, and FLUNG the door open, lunging dramatically around the corner. "COME OUT WITH YOUR HANDS....up?" She wound down as she realised that the situation was not quite what she had expected.  
Rather than the dangerous, hardened criminal of her imaginings, busily stuffing valuables into a bulging sack or cackling as he hauled away a bag of money, it was merely the science lab, quiet and mostly deserted. Except for a mass of wires and cords all over the floor, all attached to a strange treadmill type device. A light bulb was attached to the wires at the other end. Gosalyn didn't know much about electrical equipment, but she KNEW that normal bulbs didn't glow quite that brightly-and they CERTAINLY didn't flicker and pulse and give off lots of heat as if they were about to explode or something. And on top of the treadmill was the only other soul currently in St. Canard High besides herself, Launchpad and her father--or at least, she supposed it was a person. It was hard to tell, since, for some odd reason, the top half of its body was completely covered with small pieces of paper. But she could see the legs pumping desperately below, and hear the laboured breathing. The treadmill was moving at a very fast pace--a pace that even an Olympic athlete would have some difficulty with, after a bit--and from the sound of it, this person was obviously NO athlete.  
"What's going on here?" asked Gosalyn, curiously. This wasn't as good as foiling a bad guy, but it was still interesting. Something wrong was going on here--hey, even if she couldn't heroically stop a criminial, maybe she could still stop a crime!  
The person was so exhausted, they didn't have ANY energy left for talking. It was obvious that they were only staying on their feet and keeping up with the treadmill because they HAD to--not out of choice.  
Gosalyn came forward to look at the machine and found out WHY the person was being forced to run at this insane speed--their hands had been TAPED to the handlebar! "What the...?! Who DID this to you?!" she snapped, angrily. But deep inside, she was also kind of glad. This was definitely a crime, and she, Gosalyn Mallard, Superhero! was going to stop it before it got any worse. She could save a life! Perhaps she'd still get her photo in the paper. "I like gym class, but I never liked it THIS much...boy, they sure are MEAN to students back in the past..." she muttered under her breath. She started to untie the hands, but then thought better of it, and turned the speed down on the machine first.  
Gratefully, the person slowed down from a sprint, to a run, to a jog, to a fast walk, to a slow walk, and the bits of paper started to fall off, revealing a skinny, teenaged rat-boy with long brown hair--which was singing around the edges. Then Gosalyn released him--the tape ripping the fur off his wrists as it came off, but that couldn't be helped. Weakly, he slumped to the floor directly behind the treadmill. Sparks leapt off his clothing occasionally and little bits of paper still kept floating over to him every now and then, but he brushed them away. The light bulb at the other end of the room started to cool down...but was so full of juice it would take a while to fully shut off.  
"Now...who are you, and what's going on here?" said Gosalyn in her best Official Reporter Voice. The boy looked blearily up at her, and Gosalyn looked right into his face for the first time--and recognised him. He was twenty years younger and had a lot more hair and wasn't wearing the customary thick purple-tinted safety goggles in front of his eyes, but there was still no mistaking the fact that it was--would be, in the future...."MEGAVOLT!" she gasped without thinking.  
"What....?" murmured the boy, vaguely. "No...I'm sure I didn't create anywhere near THAT much electricity....that much....(pant) would've killed me and probably...incinerated me to boot...I generated...a pretty...(gasp) good amount, though..." A strange note of pride entered his voice at this last statement, and he struggled to pull himself into a sitting position. "I don't know...who you are...but I think...you may have saved my life," he finally caught his breath, but his face was still horribly pale underneath his short beige fur. Somewhat shakily holding out his right hand, he said, "Elmo Sputterspark...at your service." and brushed a piece of paper off his long nose.  
Gosalyn held out her own hand...then, noticing the sparks that were leaping off of his body, thought better of it and just nodded politely instead. "Gosalyn Mallard", she answered, not thinking to disguise her name in time. "So, what's..." she waved vaguely around to indicate the entire room, "this, all about?"  
Elmo took a deep breath. "Well, this machine is my latest science project--I wanted to prove that static electricity can be used to power a light bulb, and, if that, then it could be used to do all kinds of useful work."  
Gosalyn snorted. "What's the big deal about that? EVERYBODY knows that electricity powers light bulbs! Duh!"  
Elmo shook his head--slowly, as if he was afraid it might fall off. "No...that's current electricity...the kind that flows. STATIC electricity is different..it's everywhere, and it's easily generated by living things...such as when you walk on a carpet while wearing socks and then touch a metal doorknob, and you get a shock. Tons of electricity is wasted in those little shocks, by everybody, every day. If only it could be harnessed somehow, well....well, it wouldn't go to waste, anymore, and we wouldn't need as many generators and things."  
Gosalyn tried to absorb all of this. She was quickly becoming comfortable talking to Elmo, as if he was just any other kid, and finding it easy to forget he was a future supervillian. "So, that's why the treadmill has a carpet on it. I just thought that was to make it softer so it doesn't hurt your feet so much when you excercise. Why were you tied to the thing, though? And why were you going so FAST?"  
A glimmer of hot, ferocious, animal RAGE passed through Elmo's eyes for a moment, so fierce that it startled Gosalyn and made her take an involuntary step backwards. "Hamm String," growled Elmo Sputterspark, clenching his fists and shaking with fury. A small, bright arc of current leapt off his finger and Gosalyn flinched, suddenly and forcibly reminded of just WHO she was talking to--and was all alone with, in a closed down building...but, no more electricity followed. "HE did this...that...that...." he said a word that normally meek little science geeks didn't even know--"he's always been a bully, but this time he's gone too far! Slamming me into a locker or a trash can every day is one thing, but this....THIS...!" Elmo took several deep breaths in an attempt to get himself back under control. "He...he turned the speed way up, tied my hands to the bar, and, LAUGHING, he and his horrible girlfriend just...LEFT me here! I've been doing this since 4:00 PM, unable to stop or slow down...and the electricity kept building and building...it was interesting from a scientific point of view, but, frankly, it was starting to scare me."  
"Well, we'll get him back later," said Gosalyn. "For one thing, we'll turn him in to the police. He could have KILLED you; what he did can't possibly be legal! For now, however, we have to find my dad, whereever he went...and we have to get you to the hospital."  
"No...I'm tired but I'm fine, really..." Elmo struggled to his feet, leaning against the wall for support. "I'll be okay if I can just...get some...rest...." and he pitched over face-first in a dead faint.  
Gosalyn wasted no time. "DAD!!" she yelled out into the corridor. "LAUNCHPAD!! OVER HERE! WE NEED HELP!"  
She also couldn't help but notice--with a shudder--that the spot of carpet where he had been lying before was slightly scorched.  
  
Darkwing and Launchpad, meanwhile, had found the wrecked Algebra classroom, still stuffed full of time-top--and clanking sounds coming from within said device, as Megavolt, indeed, was already busy repairing the time machine, or at least trying to. "The gig is up, Megsy!" yelled Darkwing, tumbling and rolling dramatically (and totally unnecessarily, but, hey, he had an image to keep up) into the remains of the room. "You're not taking off in that thing without US, bucko!"  
"What?" came a muffled voice from inside the time-top, and Megavolt's head, now properly re-adorned with plug-hat, poppped out of the hatch. "Leave without you? Whoah, what a great idea! I never thought of that!"  
Darkwing smacked himself upside the head. "Me and my big beak..."  
"But, fun as that would be, I don't want my arch-enemy running around loose in history where he could mess up the timeline. So, no, I'm not gonna do THAT. I was just trying to get this thing fixed as quickly as possible...I figured you'd come back here pretty soon anyway...." he shrugged and went back to work.  
"Well...uh..." Darkwing was temporarily at a loss for what to say, but rallied magnificently. "You, uh...you better not have stolen any of those parts, Mister!"  
"No, I didn't, 'Mommy'," came Megavolt's sarcastic tones from inside the machine. "I bought them fair and square with my credit card. So it won't even be created for another 17 years, big deal..." A loud clank. A muffled curse. "Uh, guys, be quiet out there, this is delicate work. I gotta concentrate." Megavolt ran his fingers through what was left of his hair, making it stand up even worse than it already did, and stared at the blurring control panel. He usually had a hard time concentrating on one thing for an extended time anyway, but this was...different. Why was his vision going all blurry? Was it exhaustion? No, he was used to going without sleep for days at a time and he had shaken off the last lingering effects of the "time-travel hangover" hours ago. But no matter what the cause, he felt...weak. And strangely DIZZY. He felt as if he just couldn't bring things into focus...not his thoughts, or what he was physically seeing either...  
"I must be more tired than I thought," he muttered to himself, wiping a greasy rag across his forehead, which really just transferred the dirt from the rag onto his head, rather than cleaning him at all. "Maybe I'll feel better if I recharge...wonder where the nearest fuse-box is, anyway...?" He went to climb out, but somehow couldn't find the strength, and just leaned against the wall of the cockpit, breathing.  
"dad!" came a faint voice from somewhere down the corridor. "launchpad! over here! we need help!"  
"Gosalyn?" said Darkwing, straining to tell which direction the voice was coming from. "Where are you? I'm coming!"  
"'We' need help?" wondered Launchpad quietly, and followed along behind. It didn't even occur to him to stay and guard the time machine and Megavolt...but as it turned out, there wasn't much danger likely from that particular supervillian's quarter.  
"I'm in here, Dad," came Gosalyn's voice, louder this time. "And this poor guy needs to get to the hospital! Hurry, Dad! Bring Launchpad, so he can carry 'im!" She paused for thought for a moment. "Oh, and by the way: Launchpad? Make sure, absolutely SURE, you don't touch him with anything METAL! It's very important!"  
"Hospital?" wondered Darkwing. "Has there been an accident or something? And what's with the 'metal' thing...?" He found the open doorway.  
"I got him, DW" said Launchpad, striding on ahead and coming back out of the room with a skinny, long-haired rat boy flooped across one brawny shoulder. "Man, this poor kid looks like he's been through....absolutely EVERYTHING. And then some." Gosalyn followed him out of the room, looking strangely subdued.  
Darkwing leaned forward to look at the boy. He was...oddly familiar. But no time for that now; he was a do-gooder, and obviously the good that needed to be done right now was to get this injured citizen some competent medical care. The boy's face was as white as a sheet and clammy, and his clothes were sizzling and sparking. In fact...Launchpad's hair was starting to stand on end too, just from being near the kid! Darkwing took a step away from them-just to be on the safe side, you understand. "Yes...the hospital. Let's tell Megavolt where to find us first, though." They walked through the school. "WE'LL BE AT THE ST. CANARD HOSPITAL, MEGAVOLT!" he yelled through the open doorway of the Algebra class.  
"Okay," gasped Megavolt, and it took nearly all his energy to say it loudly enough to be heard. What was WRONG with him...?  
  
"Yes, you were right in bringing him here," said the doctor, a tall, slender, attractive duck woman of around 30 with straight brown hair who looked rather harried--as was to be expected for anybody who had just finished working two whole shifts straight through, and gotten to bed only two hours earlier. But she was handling the situation with aplomb, considering. "It seems he's suffering from the effects of an extremely large electrical shock...but not in the, well, the normal WAY that it usually happens. A lightning bolt or similar passes right through you and then is gone, it does whatever damage it is going to do and that's it, but this...it's like...the electricity is somehow CONTAINED in him. It's very odd. It's dissipating slowly on its own, but we need to find a way to get it out of him quickly--and SAFELY, without it zapping through his heart and killing him--or through his _brain_ and causing permanent brain-damage. I don't know how...maybe he'll be all right if we leave him alone and watch him carefully...?"  
"Static", whispered Elmo from his bed, where he lay on a rubber sheet in order to help dampen the voltage he was still carrying. The doctor leaned closer to hear. "Static electricity. Not a current. Is what caused this. That's why. It's just sitting there. It was able. To build and build and build. Without moving or going anywhere."  
"Static electricity?!" snorted the doctor, disbelievingly. "You mean like when you get zapped by a metal doorknob after walking on a carpeted floor? There's no way THAT little bit of shock could possibly build up to THESE levels! It was just barely short of lethal, from the looks of your test results. I think perhaps your memory of the last several hours was muddled a bit by the shock. Just lie still and rest as much as possible, Mr. Sputterspark." She turned away before he could protest. "And you three, you are by way of being his...?"  
"Friends." said Gosalyn. Darkwing turned to look at her, but then thought better of it. "Yes, that's right, Dr...." he read the nametag she had crookedly fixed to her lapel in a hurry, "Phyllis O. Dendron. We're his friends."  
"After all, if we weren't his friends," Launchpad pointed out, practically, "would we have been checking up on him at a school, hours after it let out for the day?"  
Stifling a yawn, Dr. Dendron stood up, stretching. "Oh, geez...first I work the night shift right after the day shift, and when I get home, my little girl Rhoda just HAD to show me this science documentary on TV, and now...this. I don't think I've had a proper night's sleep in about a week...I'm gonna go get everybody a good cup of coffee, I think we'd ALL be better for it. He should be all right without supervision for a few minutes anyway, but push the beeper if anything goes wrong and a nurse will be with you shortly." Yawning, she staggered out the door.  
Darkwing finally had the chance to take a close look at the kid. "Sputterspark, Sputterspark...that name is familiar..." he looked into Elmo's sleepy eyes..and gasped. "MEGAVOLT!"  
"No, it was nowhere near that amount, why does everybody keep saying that..?" murmured Elmo in a half-sleeping tone, and passed out again.  
"Wait a minute..." said Darkwing, pacing the floor of the small room, which always helped him think. "I think...I think I'm putting some clues together here. The date...it's June 10, 1973--the day before that prom, when Megavolt first attacked! And around the same time, Elmo Sputterspark disappeared...at the time, I never connected them as being the same person, but now we DO know...but...what's still missing...is exactly HOW he became Megavolt in the first place..."  
"Well, I think that being strapped to a static-electricity-generating-machine..whatchamacallit...thingie, for hours and hours and hours, might do it!" said Gosalyn, with more force than she intended.  
"Yeah, that'd do it all right," said Darkwing. "But nobody would do such a horrible thing as tie somebody to a machine like that.." he balked as his memory dredged up some simply dreadful personal memories of his own high school experience, "er...would they?"  
"Hamm String would!" said Gosalyn, angrily. "He did just that--he forced poor Elmo here to keep running and keep building up more and more power, for a long time! It's lucky he didn't die!"  
"Wow, yeah." said Launchpad, cheerfully. "And really lucky you were there, Gosalyn. I mean, whoah, it could've been a lot worse, like the doctor said! It could have stopped his heart, or..."  
"Or...fried his....brain..." Darkwing cut in, each word coming out slowly as the shocking realisation dawned. "Oh, my, GOD!! Gosalyn! This is...this is IT! This IS how he became Megavolt! A huge, strange accident involving electricity...happening to Elmo Sputterspark...on the day right before the night Megavolt first attacked! It's GOTTA be! This is it! We've solved the mystery! We've put the missing pieces together!" He did a few little dance steps in the air, from glee.  
"Only, now, it's gonna be the almost-accident that DIDN'T create Megavolt", Gosalyn pointed out. "Because he's hurt, but he's gonna be okay, and his brain is definitely still here. Don't let him get started on that boring science junk, he'll talk your ear off."  
"Yeah..." Darkwing considered this for a moment, then smiled. "Now, I normally don't condone your wandering off without me in a strange building, young lady, but this time, I gotta admit...ya did good, kid!" He leaned forwards and touseled Gosalyn's already-messy red hair. "You stopped one of the worst supervillians St. Canard has ever seen from even forming, and you've made the city that much safer of a place to live!"  
"Whoo! Way to go, Gos!" said Launchpad, punching his fist in the air.  
"Guys..." Gosalyn rolled her eyes, embarrassed, and pulled away from her adoptive father. "Hey, what's that sound?" There was a strange scratching/tapping noise, coming from the window. Darkwing strode over to it and lifted the latch.  
"Megavolt!" he said, as he saw the face of the supervillian, who was calmly standing outside, waiting to be let in. "Why don't you come in through the door, like normal people? Oh, wait, I forgot who I was talking to..." He stood back as the yellow-clad rat climbed in through the window--they were only on the first floor. "Er..." he began, and then paused uncomfortably. "I hate to say this, Megsy, but...you definitely look like you've seen better days. In fact, you look as if you've seen better CENTURIES."  
"Tell me about it," gasped the electrical rat, who seemed to be in pain, but why, nobody could tell. "I just wanted....to tell you...the time-top's fixed." He collapsed on a small folding chair as his knees buckled.  
"WAIT a minute!" said Gosalyn, looking from the bed, where the young Elmo Sputterspark was still recovering from an almost brain-damaging--but not QUITE--electrical shock, and then over to the corner, where Megavolt, his alter ego that resulted from that shock--or, rather, the worse one, the one that HADN'T happened--was sitting with his head in his hands, and then back again. "HOW can BOTH of you be here at the same time?! I...I..." she rounded on Megavolt. "I...de-created you! Or something!"  
"Ooohhh...." moaned Megavolt weakly. "That wasn't a very nice thing to do. Is that why I feel like I've been dumped into the bay and eaten by a shark...?"  
Just then, Dr. Dendron came back in with the coffee. "Oh, hello," she said to Megavolt, noticing him in the corner. "You must be Elmo's father? I can see the family resemblance, it's quite strong. I would have gotten you a cup of coffee too had I known you were here..." She handed out the cups of steaming coffee to everybody--including Gosalyn, being too frazzled to remember that eleven-year-olds aren't supposed to drink coffee at all. Gos quickly took a sip before the doctor could remember..and burned her tongue.  
"Anyway," Dr. Dendron was continuing, "You'll be glad to know that your son is going to be all right. He's hurt, but fortunately the electricity didn't do any permanent damage, and....er, are you all right, sir?" She saw the pallor of his face and the fact that he was crumpled over. "Here, I'll just take your temperature--EEEK!!" She gasped, frightened beyond all belief. When she went to raise his head up, her hand passed...right THROUGH him!  
This was too much for the good doctor, on top of everything else. "I REALLY need to get some rest, before I become one of my own patients..." she murmured, backing hurriedly out of the room.  
The others saw it now, too--Megavolt wasn't just pale, he was actually translucent! And fading more and more with every passing second.  
"I get it!" whispered Gosalyn. "He's being erased from existence! Whoah, just like in a science-fiction movie! Funny, though, I never thought it would...well...hurt, to be erased...I feel like I'm at a funeral or something."  
"Yeah..." said Launchpad, wiping away a tear, as Megavolt got fainter and fainter. "This is gonna sound weird, but, ya know what? I'm gonna miss ol' Megavolt. I really am. Life just won't be the same without him."  
"Of course it won't be the same! It'll be a lot better!" said Darkwing. "We won't have an enemy ripping up the town anymore; we'll have normal, healthy, Elmo Sputterspark--a harmless, friendly citizen. One less supervillian to worry about; won't that be great, Launchpad?"  
He paused. "Er...Launchpad?"  
The burly redheaded duck had completely, suddenly, and without warning--disappeared.  
"What's going ON around here?!" demanded Darkwing. "This is all turning into a dream...a nightmare...worse than that, some cheesy late-night flick! Gosalyn, be a good girl, tell me that I DIDN'T just see Launchpad disapp--" he broke off. His eyes knew perfectly well what they were seeing, but his brain refused to recognise it. "GOSALYN!!!" he cried, lunging towards her. His precious little girl! She was fading, too! She was already half-translucent--he could see the shape of the hospital bed and the shelves behind her--through her! He reached for her, trying to take her into his arms, but he felt nothing. It was like trying to hold smoke.  
"Dad...?" came her voice, sounding as if it was from very far away. "What's happening? Don't leave me, Dad..." and then nothing. Darkwing Duck was left holding empty air.  
And then he wasn't even Darkwing Duck anymore.  
  



	3. The Shocking Conclusion

Phantom Hero   
  


Phantom Hero (The Innocents)   
  
Part 3   
  


  
  
Darkwing's clothes changed back to Drake Mallard's civillian attire, as the new timeline finally closed in on him. Mentally, however, the change took a little longer. He didn't know quite what was going on...it was all starting to fog and blur, but he knew there was something...something horribly wrong...that needed to be fixed...in time. Time! The time machine! Yes! He needed to get back to the time machine..fix this...  
Gosalyn.  
The thought blazed across his mind. He had to save Gosalyn!  
...whoever she was.  
But she was IMPORTANT. That was the important thing. Gosalyn. Get to time machine. Save Gosalyn. Important.  
Thinking those thoughts over and over again as hard as he could to keep them from fading, Drake Mallard forced himself out the door, across town to the high school, and into the Algebra classroom. He almost wandered off his course and completely forgot where, who, and even WHY he was at least a dozen times on his way there, but he eventually made it and somehow managed to set off the correct sequence to put the time top into auto-return mode. There was a dizzying sensation--as there ALWAYS was, considering the machine relied on rapid spinning to trigger the time-warp--and he was there.  
Noise pounded in all around him as the top reappeared at a few minutes after the same time and place it had left from--the shopping mall, during Christmastime, with a big, chaotic, panicky crowd all around. With a difference--now the huge toys from underneath the tree were moving about as if under their own power and attacking the populace. Which explained why the crowd was panicky, of course.  
A strangely-dressed duck, done up like some kind of old-fashioned jester from Renaissance times, flew over to the time-top and bounced up and down impatiently as Darkwing staggered out. "You're back! Don't EVER run off with my property again and...say....who are you? ARE you the same guy who got into it a few minutes ago....you sound like him, and you're about the right size, but he was wearing different clothes..." The jester duck looked suddenly very confused--well, more so than usual. "And..weren't there other people with you? A big guy, and a little girl, both with...red hair, I think....and...and another guy, skinny, wearing yellow..." The duck looked off into the air, totally dazed. "Friend...I think...he was my friend...wasn't he?"  
Drake Mallard had more important things to do than to waste time talking to--suddenly the face snapped into focus in his memory. "QUACKERJACK?!" he yelled, backing away very fast. "You....you're one of the most dangerous criminals in St. Canard! One of the Fearsome Four! Nobody's ever been able to take you guys down! Please...please just leave me alone! I've...I've had a very bad day already!" and he leapt away from him, plunging out the door of the mall.  
"Okay, I won't hurt you," said Quackerjack, distracted by looking over the time-top for damage, "but...should I know you?"  
  
_Have to...get information_, Drake told himself, when he got home to 537 Avian Way. Somehow he knew it WAS his home..that was one piece of information, at least, that he was still sure of. However, he seemed to also have muddled impressions of something to do with living in...a tower? At the Audobon Bay bridge? _That's ridiculous, that place is an abandoned wreck with big holes in the walls, nobody could live there..._ Archives. Or something. Gosalyn. Got to find out what happened to Gosalyn. (Who's Gosalyn?) Got to find out. What happened. _Shouldn't there be more furniture and things around, such as, for three people, not one? What a ridiculous thought, I've always lived alone!_  
Finally, he found the cabinet where he kept his newspaper clippings--something he'd always done since--well--actually, he wasn't sure WHY he'd always done it, exactly...he just had. To keep well informed on things in general, he supposed. He riffled through them desperately, trying to find some clue, SOMEthing that was familiar...and stopped.  
There she was. A black and white photo of a little girl stared at him out of a paper, underneath a banner headline. That was it. That was HER. He KNEW her. This was Gosalyn! His hands shaking, Drake read the story to himself. Maybe now he could find out why she was evidently so important...  
It was dated roughly two years ago, and told about how a very dangerous criminal, Taurus Bulba--oh, yes! He remembered hearing about this guy, now, it had been all over the news!--had wanted the secret code to start some doomsday device, but the only living person who even had the possibility of knowing the code was the granddaughter of the scientist who had invented it. The scientist himself had already been murdered by Bulba's hired goons, before they could get the code. Bulba had wasted no time in tracking down and kidnapping the little girl, Gosalyn Waddlemeyer, and then...  
Drake's eyes filled with tears and his hands, clenching automatically into fists of rage, crumpled the paper. She had refused to give him the code, and...and...he'd KILLED her! That little girl! Taurus Bulba had murdered her!  
Tragedies like this happened every day, however...why was this one bothering him so much...as if it were somehow personal...?  
He smoothed out the paper as well as he could and looked into the little girl's eyes one time time.  
And then, it ALL came flooding back.  
"I...I am...Darkwing Duck!" he whispered. "Or...or I SHOULD be. And...I had a sidekick...that big guy with red hair that Quackerjack mentioned...Runway or something like that. Some nickname to do with planes...And...and I defend the city of St. Canard from criminals, like...like..." he paced the room, desperately trying to hold onto the shred of memory. "Like...the Fearsome Four. No.......the Fearsome FIVE? Negaduck, Liquidator, Bushroot, Quackerjack and....and....um....something to do with electricity. Lightning Man? Bolt? Mr. Electron? Gigawatt?"  
He stopped as the realisation hit him.  
"Megavolt", Drake Mallard whispered. "That's his name. It's all...it's because of HIM. My oldest enemy. The one I've been fighting since...high school...when he had that...accident...and..."  
_And Gosalyn HERSELF saved him!_ his brain pointed out. _SHE stopped the accident from happening! But that wasn't a bad thing...it was actually heroic...she...she saved his mind...she saved a LOT of people...  
She also, without meaning to....killed herself_.  
Drake was truly reeling now. He was suffering from a bombardment of TWO, totally conflicting, sets of memories about exactly the same person. On the one hand, he remembered Elmo Sputterspark, his friend from high school and college, who had become a brilliant scientist and figured out a way to make inexpensive, reliable electric-powered cars, among many other achievements. A friendly, somewhat absent-minded professor in his late thirties with long brown hair worn in a ponytail down the back--just because he liked to be a bit unconventional--with a little streak of grey in it at one temple...and AWFUL fashion sense, but otherwise basically blameless. There were rumours that he worked for SHUSH, the secret organisation, making odd inventions for them, but obviously plain old civillian Drake Mallard wouldn't know anything about that.  
On the other hand, he ALSO remembered 20 years' worth of being Darkwing Duck, costumed superhero, and fighting Megavolt, a crazed, supercharged supervillian who was able to shoot electricity from his hands at will and was basically a living battery...a man whose mind was GONE...a man who talked to light bulbs and honestly believed they talked back...a man who was, however, still a bona-fide GENIUS in some ways, underneath...  
"A man who COULD have been so much more..." Drake whispered to himself, shocked at the full implications. "Who...who IS so much more...now. But...shouldn't be...should he? Since...since Elmo Sputterspark never became Megavolt, because the accident never happened, that means he never attacked at the prom...I remember the prom now!" (But he remembered TWO versions: a crazy, chaotic one in which some weirdo proclaiming himself to be "Megawatt" had stormed in, shooting up the place...and at the same time, he also knew--KNEW, mind you--that it had been a more or less normal affair, with maybe one or two people talking about some rumour that Elmo Sputterspark the science dweeb was in the hospital). "Since Megavolt never formed, he never attacked, and because he never attacked...because...he..." Drake Mallard swallowed and forced himself to continue on.  
"Because he never attacked, I...never quite got the courage to be the superhero that I had always dreamed of being...I didn't have the excuse...and...Darkwing Duck never formed, either.  
"And because Darkwing Duck never existed...." tears dripped off his bill and onto the newspaper clipping, smudging the photograph, "because Darkwing Duck never existed, there was nobody there, at exactly the right time, and the right place, to SAVE that little girl...and she died."  
He came to a conclusion.  
"Strange as it may sound," he muttered to himself, "it seems...the city actually NEEDS Megavolt. He's...he's an important part of the ecology, you could say. You NEED predators; otherwise the prey gets too soft and lazy and when danger does threaten, they can't defend themselves..."  
He stood up slowly, walking out the door, headed back to the mall. Hopefully the time-top would still be there. He didn't know, or care, how he'd deal with Quackerjack. Supposedly he had an almost-superhero inside him somewhere, so perhaps he'd be able to do more than he thought he could...But he HAD to get to that time machine. No way some clown was gonna stop him.  
  
Drake checked his watch. 5:00 pm, June 10, 1973. He still had a bit of time before his other self, with Gosalyn and his sidekick, showed up. Still a bit of time to...to...  
He felt so ashamed. He couldn't BELIEVE he was doing this. He was the good guy, after all.  
Drake snuck through the deserted corridors of St. Canard High, the decorations for the prom blowing eerily above his head as before...er, after. _I HATE temporal mechanics_ thought Drake to himself. He continued resolutely on, until he found the closed door of the science lab.  
He knew perfectly well what was going on in there.  
And he also knew that if St. Canard was to have its guardian, and if one little girl was to have a chance at life....what was going on in that room...would HAVE to play out to its dreadful conclusion.  
"Forgive me, Elmo." he whispered. "I'm so sorry. But it seems that, to make things be the way they should...I'll have to have you as my old enemy, rather than my old friend. I hate to do this...but I can't let my own daughter die. No parent worth their salt could."  
He clicked a big, heavy iron padlock onto the door.  
  
The time top came to a dizzying stop. Gosalyn Mallard was the first to pop out of it, feeling almost as woozy as she had the last time...the last time? When had that been? When she had gone to the future and all that business with Dark Warrior Duck had happened? But she hadn't been sick then...she tossed it out of her mind in favour of more important things, such as Christmas shopping. "Phew, glad THAT'S over with." she staggered out into the mall, completely ignoring the ravingly angry Quackerjack. "Now, on to business! We still got a LOOOOOOOT of presents left to buy, Dad, so let's get to it!"  
"Now, now, Gosalyn, we are on a budget, you know," said Darkwing Duck, climbing out after her. Launchpad followed soon after, and last out was Megavolt...why he was there, Darkwing wasn't certain. But suddenly, for no good reason that he was aware of, and without warning, he stepped back from Gosalyn and Launchpad, lunged towards the brain-fried, electrical rodent, and--  
--gave him the HUG of his life!  
"I'm SO glad to see you!" he babbled, holding the rat at arm's length. "My dear old pal...my old enemy...Megavolt. I'm SO glad you're here." Those loopy mismatching eyes, that fried hair, that strange outfit...it was all...all so wonderfully right, somehow.  
"Uh...that's...er...great..." said Megavolt, feeling embarrassed. Being hugged by a superhero in public was bad enough, but this was happening right in front of Quackerjack, too! Boy, was he ever gonna lose Supervillian Credibility Points over this one. "Er...why are ya glad to see me, exactly?"  
The spell broke suddenly. "I....don't know." said Darkwing, very confused. He let go of the supervillian, feeling equally embarrassed. "I....just am. I guess..it's just good...to see that things are back to normal?" Even as he said it, he could tell that it was a very odd thing to say. Back to normal--as if having a team of five mutants, freaks and crazies running around the town was NORMAL! Shaking his head, he followed off after Gosalyn and Launchpad.  
Quackerjack materialised right at Megavolt's side, almost as if by magic. "What was THAT all about, Sparky?" he demanded, tossing the belled tails of his hat over his shoulder, jauntily.  
"I...don't know...Jinglebells." said Megavolt, shaking his head. "But for some reason, it gave me the creepiest deja vu feeling..."  
  


* * *  
  


Drake put the photo down, and, stretching, looked at the clock. 2:30, wow, how time could fly when you were reminiscing. Definitely time for bed--even if it WAS still ungodsly hot. He took one last look at the picture.  
Yes, indeed. There were some stories that it was better far that Gosalyn never know.  
  


-------------------------------------------------------------------------------  
  
Author's Notes: This is just my rambling. If you don't want to read it, don't go any further; the story's over. Go on, go have fun in the sunlight. (Run, run into the wilderness, to romp and play!) There's nothing else here of particular interest, unless you actually WANT to hear me ramble about the whys and wherefores of this thing...   
  
First of all, the title. It's paraphrased from an Erasure song's title: "Phantom Bride (The Innocents)". It has NOTHING to do with the song itself, but the title--most of it--works pretty well, as Darkwing would fade into nothing but a "phantom" hero, and there are two "innocents" in danger--Elmo and Gosalyn. But only ONE can be saved, not both. Saving one automatically dooms the other.   
  
The idea for this story hit me the other day. I'm sure many fans of Megavolt have thought of having someone (in a fanfic) go back in time and rescue Elmo Sputterspark before he has The Accident...I thought of it, too. Hey, who _wouldn't_ want to save the poor little guy some misery? But then I thought...WAIT a minute...that sounds nice on the _surface_, but let's look at what would REALLY happen here. _All_ the consequences that would result. Because, after all, Megavolt wasn't the ONLY new person who showed up at the prom for the first time...it was Darkwing Duck's introduction, too! And if Megavolt hadn't shown up, would Darkwing have formed? Not then, certainly. Maybe later? Or maybe not. Sometimes an event has only ONE exact moment in time in which everything is exactly right for it to happen, and no other set of circumstances will quite trigger it off. But let's just say that, since Drake had always wanted to be a superhero, it would've happened eventually. Fine, fine. But let's say it happened...just five years later. Or ten. Or MAYBE, hearing about the thing with Taurus Bulba itself could've made ordinary civillian Drake Mallard angry enough to put on a cape and mask and go fight crime. But WOULD he have been able to rescue Gosalyn? A brand new superhero with NO experience under his belt? That was a pretty dangerous opponent...maybe even a Darkwing with 10 or 15 years worth experience wouldn't be quite good enough. I'm thinking he pretty much woulda HAD to become Darkwing for the first time at that prom, or near it anyway, in order to rescue Gosalyn and get himself out of there safely, himself, as well.   
  
Couple other notes:   
  
Naturally all the "science" stuff about electricity was pure hogwash. Like I KNOW this stuff. Yeah. Right. :P The idea was just to make it sound as if perhaps _Elmo_ knew what he was saying...   
  
If you were thinking that the huge Christmas tree in the mall, with the fake, big "toys" underneath it, was just TOOOOO convenient because it allowed Quackerjack and the time-top to blend in, and if you were thinking it sounded like Quackerjack's typical setting and I had made it up/copied it out of the episodes he's in....NO. Nope. That's based off of reality! The actual mall that's right down the street from me--just a couple blocks away!--puts up a display just like that for Christmas every year. Actually some of the "toys", such as the toy soldiers and so forth, are BIGGER than real people. The time-top could definitely hide under that thing as part of the display, it really is that huge, and that gaudy. And all big, sorta parody, sorta...scary versions of old-fashioned, traditional toys like Quackerjack loves to build. (Which makes me wonder something about the people who design the mall's Christmas presentation, but that's a question for another day. ;)) The giant strands of tinsel that look as if they are big enough to hold a relatively light adult person's weight (they probably aren't, but hey--this is taking place in a cartoon universe, after all) are real too, and so is the fact that there's an Electronics Boutique right by the entrance.  
They don't sell Whiffle Boy games as far as I'm aware, though...  
  
Hope you enjoyed this, my first Darkwing fanfic! I know I'm very late getting into the fandom, but...better late than never, what?  
  


**No light bulbs were harmed in the making of this story.**


End file.
